Mail & Guardian reporter
Mercedes Sayagues, the Mail & Guardian’s Zimbabwe correspondent, flew into Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon after being expelled by the Robert Mugabe regime.
Before her departure from Harare airport, Sayagues, accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter Esmerelda, was told she would not be allowed to leave unless she signed an acknowledgement of receipt of papers declaring her a prohibited immigrant in Zimbabwe.
On Thursday Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Sayagues and Joe Winter, a BBC journalist also ordered out of the country, had been “propagating lies” and had supported the Angolan rebel movement, Unita.
The expulsion of the two comes amid a broadening government crackdown on the media and the judiciary, as well as the opposition.
South Africa’s foreign affairs representative Ronnie Mamoepa said on Wednesday that South Africa had no reason to doubt Zimbabwe’s explanation that the expulsions had nothing to do with press freedom.
M&G editor Howard Barrell said Mamoepa’s comment was “bizarre”.
“Mercedes can wear her expulsion from Zimbabwe with pride. It is testimony to nothing other than her courage and integrity as a journalist qualities for which she has earned the admiration of her colleagues and her readers alike,” Barrell said.
Sayagues first heard that Zimbabwe was withdrawing her work permit on February 15 when she was in South Africa on business.